Blog: Things About Paper Mario: Origami King

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a pretty interesting game. It's the most recent result of the crafted world games Nintendo has been working on and the latest Paper Mario game. As such I found it to be beautiful, but also a little over polished.

Honestly it 's a game that was fun while I was playing but thinking back on it a few months later, I'm finding it a bit bland. Still it has some interesting elements and I think it's worth talking about.

Please be aware of spoilers right up to the ending for Paper Mario: The Origami King.

Things I Liked

The visuals of the game are pretty awesome. The designers have put a lot of effort into constructing a world out of paper and crafts. The game feels very natural and also like the kind of idea they were looking for in the early Paper Mario games. 

That said, I liked the "real world" style more than the origami style. I think they did a lot of really interesting work in the origami creatures and settings later in the game, but somehow the lacked a little of the charm of the crafted style. Totally impressive, but I think not just the thing I really liked.

I liked the two new combat systems that were introduced for Origami King. I think the card-based RPG-style battle system used in Colour Splash was enough to keep the game interesting, but it wasn't a draw to the game. Both of the two systems used in Origami King are much more engaging. I like the minion fighting system, where you have to group enemies together to hit them either with an attack that's the right shape. It's not a knock out, but it's certainly enough to make you sit up an pay attention to every fight in the game.

The star for me, though, is really the system for boss fights. You have to create a path for Mario to travel to the boss, picking up power-ups and magic along the way and then hit the boss with the right kind of attack. These turned out to be interesting puzzles and sometimes really dynamic and interesting fights. I found it took me about half the game to really figure it out, but once I did I really enjoyed the puzzle and fight-control aspects the game offered.

Another thing I really loved is that the game has a quick help mechanism to get you through combat. You can choose at the start of a turn to spend some money for support from your audience of Toads. If you spend a little money you might get a point or two of damage to the enemies (pretty much useless but maybe lets you finish up a battle). If you spend more they might refill your health. If you spend at least 100 coins, they'll actually help solve a step in the puzzle. This can really help sometimes when you just can't see the solution. The game throws more than enough money at you that there's no real penalty to using the system.

The only downside to this is that the game does a terrible job of explaining how the system actually works. I spent a while frustrated with the game especially when I was really tired or stressed trying to win a boss fight before I lose and have to start over. Once I understood, it was nice to be able to choose if I felt up to tackling the puzzle myself or if I needed some help.

#PaperMario #PaperMarioTheOrigamiKing #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/lWaLbNzwOf

— Games TJ Plays (@GamesTJPlays) October 28, 2020

Things I Didn't Like

Honestly as a game with this level polish, there's not much to not like about it. The story is a little linear, but that's not too uncommon for a jrpg-style game and it doesn't have quite the same level of personality as I though Colour Splash had. 

I think the thing I disliked the most about this game is that it's as polished as it is. I recently watched Tama Hero's video on the evolution of Animal Crossing villagers, and she discussed the transition of the villagers from somewhat frustrating, but realistic characters to very smooth town decorations. 

Paper Mario has a somewhat similar trajectory as a series, with a very rough first outing on the N64 to an sprawling but esoteric adventure on the Game Cube to the smaller and more streamlined games that followed. At the end of the day this feels a bit like a pretty view and funny quip dispenser. 

Oh. One more thing. This is a Paper Mario game that doesn't end with a parade. What the fuck?

Things I Noticed

The Paper Mario games are known for the their excellent writing. They tend to have a charm and wit that gets left out of a lot of Nintendo's other games. Recently, Treehouse has really added a lot more personality to the games they translate (such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons), but the Paper Mario games have had a strong identity right from the start.

That being said, I think that Origami King didn't have the same level of attention as Colour Splash. There's a moment late in Colour Splash where you meet a troop of 50 Red Rescue Toads. They all look identical, but every single one of them has unique dialog, not just once but trees of dialog that lasts to the end of the game. Origami King lacks a little bit of that, there's just a little bit less life in the NPCs and in the world. 

I also had a bit of a hard time with the music. It's very good music, but it's completely unmemorable. Honestly every time I started playing I was surprised that it didn't have the theme from Colour Splash. 

Things I'd Put In a Game

Paper Mario games also inspire me to focus on those details that make the world really feel alive.

I like the general innovativeness of the combat system. The Paper Mario series is well situated in allowing for different kinds of combat that doesn't necessarily relate to the rest of the game. I'm not sure that's a thing that works smoothly in every game but it's still a fun thing to keep in mind for the right moment.

One this I definitely like is the low/no penalty system to make combat easier. There's been a lot of discussion about how to adjust difficulty and game play to accommodate players of different skills and players with different abilities. There are a lot of important parts to that discussion and different ways to implement it but I think making it a straight forward part of the combat is a really good way to be accommodating to all players. 

Final Things

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a fun game. It's pretty, it's charming, it sounds nice, it's worth playing. I finished it as much as I wanted in about 25 hours. There's more you can go back for to get collectables and such, but I was pretty happy just to get to the end of the story. 

Not every game has to be a ground breaking epic, sometimes it's nice just have something bright fun and quick to play and Origami King is that to a t. I really enjoyed my time with it.

Blog: Thoughts on Final Fantasy VI (3)

As part of my ongoing tour through my childhood, SNES RPGs, I recently played through Final Fantasy VI (or 3 if you're from around where I was in space and time). As a kid, this game was the pinnacle of what a game should be, an rpg, full of adventure, drama, swords, magic and airships (sorry Earthbound, we'll catch up later). Replaying it, I found that the game generally holds up, but it definitely has some flaws. The characters were great, the story was very good and the combat was alright, but it also got in the way the characters and the story telling.

Final Fantasy VI as I remember it. (From GameFAQs user JagDogger2525)

This post covers my thoughts about Final Fantasy VI and it includes some spoilers. Incidentally I played on my SNES, so didn't have to deal with the *cough*crappy*cough* remake. (If you're interested, I did enjoy this article about what went on with the remake).

Things I Liked

Final Fantasy VI has an amazing sense of cinema, right from the opening cut scene. It isn't afraid to change up the gameplay to strengthen that cinema. The opening cutscene of the game provides a feeling of a cold and desperate team and that sense carries over as you start to get to play but you also get the added feeling of power as you have the magitec suits and are fighting really squishy minions. Other things like the rafting scene, the opera scene and the breaking of the world scene are also really interesting moments where you do something other than the normal game play but all in service to the cinema.

A strong opening (From GameFAQs user VinnyVideo)

The music and sound design are also really well done and serve that sense of cinema. The music may not be my overall favourite for a SNES game, but it's very very strong as you're entering new scenes and helps you to understand at a visceral level what a scene or location is about. The sound design is beautiful and I like the way the game uses sound effects (although some of that is a bit of nostalgia).

The thing I liked the most about Final Fantasy VI, is the characters. The game has twelve main characters, all protagging, and the story doesn't feel muddied. I think there are two main reasons why this works as well as it does. First each character is well written, with a clear arc, goals, dreams and flaws. Second the game is very good about managing when characters take up the story stick and when they don't. Characters, whether they're currently the main playable character or not, step up when it's their scene and contribute to the story. When it's not their scene they don't steal the show, but they do contribute. This lets the game have twelve main characters running around, all contributing but only a few holding the story focus at any point in time.

As I mentioned the characters are well written and that improves the game immensely. The heroes are all complex and the NPCs are interesting. For example, the character of Gsetahl leaves you guessing as to whether he was deluded, tricked, had a face-turn (or a heel-turn). Other characters,have a similar level of complexity through out the story and this helps flesh out both the world and the story.

Our enemy, but an honest man? (From GameFAQs user VinnyVideo)

Finally, there's Kefka. I think Kefka's may be one of the most interesting villains because he doesn't have a motivation, he's just crazy. In the same way Batman's endless resources are irrelevant in the face of the Joker, Kefka takes away all of the advantages the heroes may have and also that you have as the player. In terms of story, this has to be used sparingly (if too many games implement this then it's not special) and implemented carefully. You only really interact with Kefka a handful of times in the game and so it's surprising when his true nature is revealed and the world is destroyed. It also changes the nature of the story from a save the world story to a get revenge story and I think that's interesting as a less common video game story.

I quite like the story itself. It's Final Fantasy, so it inevitably gets to the point where you have to go save the world, but I prefer the ones where the saving the world is incidental to the rest of the story (this is one of the reasons why FF XII is probably my favourite Final Fantasy). I also like, as I said that this is the game where you don't save the world. The stories of video games tend to fall into a much smaller range than a lot of other media and so any game where the story does something unusual is a nice addition.

The strength of the story definitely comes back to the strength of the characters. Much of the story is based on the characters resolving problems that had been going on before the game began, but now heightened by the back drop of of a world war and the eventual end of the world. The characters aren't ever the chosen ones so much as the ones who are currently there who can probably do something.

The dialog isn't great, as it's suffers from early 90s translation and Woolseyisms (thought "Son of a Submariner" is and will always be a great line). But the story shines through the writing and especially now that it's been a few months since I finished the game, my feelings looking back are that the story was well done.

Finally, I liked the setting. As a kid FFVI was the game I set all other games by. Is it an RPG? Does everyone get a sword? Ok I think it'll be a good game (like I said, sorry Earthbound). So at it's heart the concept of an early industrial world powered by magic really appeals to me. The world is a little thin, there's not too many actual towns and not too many people in those towns and the towns are all very similar.  Still the game does a good job of making each place feel different and the people in each place feel different both from people in other places and from each other.

As with many games (especially from Square) at the time having spent hours walking across the land you get a really deep feeling for where things are and who's doing what. Then when you get the airship and can suddenly take in the whole world at once you get a real feeling of scale and speed, which supplements the adventure you'd already felt.

Final Fantasy VI really doubles down on this with the World of Ruin. After you've spent a long time getting attached to the world and the people in it, you're then forced to go around the world again and find where towns have gone and who managed to survive. So you get a very "home from away" feeling, which I think also heightens your attachment to the world.

Things I Didn't Like

The cinema of Final Fantasy VI is well served by the game play except for one big problem, the random encounters. It's pretty standard to bitch about random encounters, you're trying to get something done and then the game cuts into your peaceful walk with a loud clang and a messed up screen and then you have to fight a bunch of numpty little somethings that get killed without you actually paying any attention to what's going on.

Yay! A fight! Again! ... (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

That's annoying. It certainly ruins the pace of the game and I think it's a reason why people have significantly fonder memories of games where this doesn't happen (Yes, yes, Earthbound, I'll get to you, I promise). I think that the problem in FFVI is a little more specific though.

The specific problem with random encounters in FFVI may be best illustrated by one instance in the game where having arrived at the top of a tower to fight a boss (and sorry I don't remember which tower or which boss), and watched the boss spar verbally with our heroes I then had to walk six tiles up to fight the boss. At this point I fought two meaningless random encounters before making it to the boss.

Gamewise of course this messed up my carefully refilled health and mp, but it also totally derailed the story. Suddenly the tension that had built up in the story was gone and the fight with the boss was a little anticlimactic. The game mechanic got in the way of the story.

The application of random encounters in FFVI creates this effect quite often (sneaking through an enemy base? Well don't forget to fight an endless series of soldiers). The game mechanic (which may have felt more relevant at the time) overrides the story and forces you to remember that you're playing a game. I'm not saying that the inverse, story overrides the game mechanic, isn't also a problem, it's just not the problem that FFVI has.

The other big problem the game has is that while in story each of the large cast of characters is interesting, in game play they're not. There tends to be a wide disparity in the usefulness/effectiveness of character's powers when fighting, some characters (such as Sabin) are so overpowered that you'd be dumb not to take them, but then they end up getting more power. However using underpowered heroes feels useless a lot of the time, since even if they get more levels their power is never useful (such as Setzer).

The crew is large and talented ... and at least Setzer brought the airship. (From GameFAQs user Super_Slash)

Square has done a lot of things in the following Final Fantasy games to try to manage this problem, but I think it largely comes down to it's hard to have a dozen interesting game mechanics in the same game.

The game also suffers from my pet peeve of unexplained status effects. Poison seems to mostly make sense both for the heroes and the monsters, but there's a lot of effects where I'm not sure what's happen or if anything is actually happening. The giant monster sprites are pretty and kinda cool, but obscure information really badly. As I've said in a few other of these posts, I think that status effects are by far the most interesting part of an RPG's combat system.

Finally the game is unnecessarily slow. I say unnecessarily because there's an item you can equip which makes the game faster. I recently realized that this might have been their attempt to include the concept of encumbrance, but really it just means that you're slightly less effective at fighting (very slightly considering that most random encounters last one round whether you have the sprint shoes equipped or not). This goes against what I think is one of the basic tenants of design, which is not to waste people's time. 

Things I'd Include in a Game

My favourite part of the gameplay from FFVI is the parts where it splits the party and lets you work through different parts of the action (or story) with different teams. It's certainly the most interesting game play (especially if you're used to cruising through fights with your over levelled team) and I think given a cast this big it's also the best way that the story gets told. So I think that's one thing I'd love to take forward, especially if you can start to include some of the concepts like party-chats you see in more modern RPGs.

I also like the way the game balances the gameplay and the story telling / cinema. Obviously the amount of ludo vs narrative you want in any game varies depending on what you want, but I think for a game about story this one does a pretty good job of managing the two, at least if you can ignore the random encounters.

Not enough opera simulators coming out these days (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

Finally, I'm reminded again about how good a clear system for status ailments is. FFVI has really pretty enemy sprites, but as a consequence, it's almost impossible to see if you've inflicted an enemy with a status. It's also not very clear from the game generally what status effects are supposed to do and when they've worked or not (and why). So that's a thing I'd like to do better.

Final Thoughts

I love this game. I don't love it quite as much as I did when I was a kid and my replay has dropped it behind FFXII on my list of favourite Final Fantasy games. It doesn't have quite as much polish as I'd like, and I think having Chrono Trigger around puts it in a slightly dimmer light than it might stand it on it's own. I really like the story and the efforts the creators went to in realizing using cinematics and game play in a really balanced way.

A fight at the end of the world (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

I like any game that doesn't involve "you are the chosen one now go save the world" and while this game has shadows of that, a the story isn't that one. I like how you're chosen by dint of being the only ones there and your saving the world has a lot more to do with getting revenge on the evil clown who's already destroyed everything.

If you haven't played FFVI, you should, or at least you should find a good Let's Play of it. I would be careful since apparently the new remake has some problems, not the least of which are really poorly implemented graphics. Still, it's a worthwhile game and I think it's an important part of gaming history as one of the strongest games before the dawn of the 3d era.

The End (From GameFAQs user noidentity)

Blog: Thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I had so much fun playing The Wind Waker, that I started playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess right afterwards. Unfortunately  I didn't find it to have quite the fun and the charm of it's predecessor. It's a good game, but I think it's a bit of a reactionary swing to try to make a game that was darker and "more like Ocarina".

From GameFAQs user Tropicon

As always with my thoughts on video games, there will be spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess below. Also note that I played the Wii version, so I will be grumbling about motion controls.

Things I Liked

Sadly, while the game was fun, there were not a lot of things I really liked while playing Twilight Princess. I'm not sure how much of that is that I feel like it's a low point between Wind Waker and Skyward Sword (maybe it needed an alliterative title...).

Though it's a little silly, one of my favourite parts of the game was canoeing. It's not a mechanic that's used very much, once in the main story and after that only in a side quest, but it feels surprising intuitive and fun. I think I also like the idea of Link having to take more and different modes of transportation as he travels around the world.

The game was effective at conveying a sense of being lost in the Lost Woods. Simply taking away the map you've been relying on for the majority of the game and then connecting the areas in the woods using paths at different altitudes (you always have to go up or down) makes it much harder to track where you are. You're also kept distracted by a constant enemy that follows you rather than is tied to the rooms of the dungeon. I thought it was effective and a good idea.

The final boss fight of the game was good and was probably the strongest fight in the game. The phase where you fight Puppet!Zelda is a little cumbersome, but generally feels like you're being given a fair chance (although it's a lot slower than other Zelda games because of the motion controls).

The fight against Boar!Gannon is pretty good. I like using the bow to stun him, but I found that there were a couple of problems with the camera during this part of the fight. I also found that they might have changed up the fight mechanics a little too quickly since I usually figured out what was going on just as they changed to the next things.

The horseback fight was epic but was frustrating to play.  The one-on-one sword fight against Gannondorf was very good and felt like the best fight in the game. I felt like I was matched against an opponent as strong as I was and I felt like there was a genuine, uncheated challenge.

This Link, is ready for business - From GameFAQs user Sitchey

Things I Didn't Like

The motion controls were the thing I most consistently didn't like in Twilight Princess. Everything feels wrong and feels like it's the motion controls were bolted on (which they were, since this was supposed to be a Game Cube game). The "swing as button press" problem was prevalent throughout the early Wii era and generally makes the game feel like you might or might not have made the right motion at the right time.

Even the pointing controls are not that good. I found a lot of the time it was very difficult to actually point at the thing I wanted to point at. Sometimes it felt awesome and I was able to hit an enemy with the bow and arrow from a great distance, but often enough I just tried to aim while my reticule bounced around the screen. I may also have gotten used to being able to move and shoot while playing the HD remake of Wind Waker, so having to stop and aim also annoyed me.

I also found that the Z-targeting still doesn't work that well. The game and I seem to disagree on what was the most threatening things were and which one I should fight first. I think the game's reliance on swarms of enemies also caused this since you'd have to Z-target through a lot of little things to get to the one big one that you might want to fight.

I think the "special attacks" were also not as well implemented as they were in Wind Waker (or at least as they were in the HD remake). In the attack where you roll behind the enemy in Wind Waker you automatically stopped right behind the enemy, in Twilight Princess you often end up rolling most of the way around the side and out of the range where you can attack the enemy from behind. I think this was an effort to give the player more control, but it ends up making it harder to play the game.

Of course the smartest creature in the Zelda universe is part chicken. - From GameFAQs user BlueGunstarHero

The other place where a little assist from the game would have been nice is in jumping off edges. There were several times where I was trying to jump from one platform to another or to step out onto a rope and I was angled wrong and fell to my death. A little assist from the game would have been nice, even if the Wii (or I guess the GameCube) wasn't powerful enough to animate the little steps I loved in Ni No Kuni.

Aside from the control problems, Twilight Princess is really really padded out. The game took me around 50 hours to complete and I don't think that the game has enough real content to justify that time. Fighting is slow, especially when you're a wolf. They send in swarms of enemies. There are enemies that have to be killed using two different weapons. They put big chest full of tiny amounts of Rupies at the end of long dead ends in dungeons. Set pieces respawn when you leave and return to an area. They insist on tell you every time you start the game how much the different colours of Rupies are worth (bug or feature, you be the judge). Even the most basic part of a Zelda game is stretched out: you find five pieces of heart instead of four.

The padding got so bad during the Sky Temple that I just about quit playing the game. It took me three evenings to get through because the design required so much switching between items and so much mindless busy work going from one area to another. I also ended up going back though the temple to make sure that I didn't leave any pieces of heart behind only to discover that the hard to reach chests held Rupies that I couldn't use.

Zelda games, in general, have a problem with knowing when and how to end. You can usually defeat the last boss 15 hearts and 3/4s of the bottles. Is it worth it to get 100%? Sometimes that can be the fun, but I found especially with Twilight Princess it just never felt rewarding to try. Do I need 120 bombs? Probably not.

Things I Noticed

The biggest thing I noticed about Twilight Princess is that it really needs an HD remake. There are some places in the game where you're shown the beautiful vistas (especially in the desert and the mountains) but then everything else looks blurry and aliased. Similarly I think switching to full dual-stick control, like in Wind Waker, would make a lot of the play more pleasant. The palette of the game is also quite dull ("Call of Duty: Hyrule" brown) in a lot of places, and a little more vibrancy to the world would also improve the game.

It's just a little muddy, it's still good! - From GameFAQs user Casoonie

Another thing that an HD remake might help with is the animation. Link and Gannondorf are really well animated in the game play and the cutscenes at the end of the game, but Zelda isn't. Link and Gannondorf will have an interesting interaction and then Zelda will get a gasp of dull surprise. Simillarly in other parts of the game, Link looks great and moves fairly smoothly through the environment, but the NPCs look blocky and uncoordinated. If there ever is an HD remake I hope they brighten everyone up.

The game also has a problem with how power strong Link is. Basically Link is too strong for most of the enemies in the game. To compensate for this they add more enemies to the fights, which is either not challenging, or becomes unfairly challenging since one enemy's unbreakable block animation will protect another and there's nothing Link can do to fight back. This shows up particularly with the Darknuts where fighting two or three or five of them gets unfairly difficult. It also shows up in the horse combat sections, where the challenge comes from dealing with so many attackers that you can't see hot to defend yourself.  They were much better at handling combat difficulty in Skyward Sword.

I think it's interesting that this is the "darkest" Zelda. There's a lot more explicit death than in most of the other games (The Zora Queen actually tells you "I was executed"). I think a lot of this was to combat the feeling some people had to Wind Waker being too "kiddy". On the one hand I think it's interesting to see slightly more adult themes taken on in a Zelda game, but honestly I think it's the kind of things where you could split into two IPs, retaining lightness in Zelda and handling more complex or adult themes in a new IP. That being said, I don't think Nintendo is actually that interested in making games for grown-ups.

One part of the game that doesn't feel either for kids or for grown-ups, is the way gender and sexuality are handled in the game. I was particularly bothered by one scene in the game where Renaldo confides in Link that he's terrified of Temla because she flirts with him. If there were any other references to flirting or sexuality in the game, this could just a reaction by a religious man to a flirtatious woman, but it is pretty much the game's only reference to sexuality.

Beyond this, a lot of the female character's designs seem to be more for the sake of teenaged male interested than driven by character. The two instances that particularly bother me were the Great Fairy and Adult Midna. In the case of the Great Fairy, we're usually (in other games) expected to understand that her power and her magic and her strength of personality are so strong that Link is simply in awe of her. Here, the way she's portrayed feels significantly less powerful and I was left feeling that the whole depiction of her was very juvenile. In the same was Adult Midna is revealed with a pan up her body, which again feels juvenile when compared to her story and why she's able to transform from her imp form back into her "true" self. (Also interesting that no other Twili seem to have breasts, or any other distinctive body parts, for that mater).

I did think that the character of Zelda was handled very well here. Generally Nintendo is pretty good about having Zelda be at least a somewhat active participant in the world (since Ocarina of Time), but often at some point in the game she gets captured through some moment of weakness. Here, that still happens, but it's part of an active choice on her part. She gives up her powers to restore Midna's. That being said, Zelda could still be a much more active protagonist of the game, but at least her absence isn't strictly due to the need to find a maiden to rescue.

While we're looking for protagonists of the game, I'm left with a question: Why isn't Midna the protagonist of the game? You can probably actually categorize her as the protagonist since she's the one who drives the plot and makes all the important decisions. Link is just along for the ride.

Our Hero. - From GameFAQs user Tropicon

Consider the same game as presented, but shown from Midna's point of view. The Queen, cast out of her kingdom, struggling to save another kingdom, while gaining the power she needs to fight off the evil invaders. That just sounds like a more interesting game to me. I think that couples with the feeling that you could split this and have a new, more grown up IP.

Finally I've decided that Link needs a pet cat. This came to me while I was standing in Link's house early in the game (and I think for the last time). Link tends to be an outsider in the Zelda games and while I understand the appeal of the orphan on the hero's journey, I think the games could all be improved by giving him a reason to care about the world. 

Things I'd Include in a Game

The biggest thing I'd take from Twilight Princess in canoeing, or at least I'd like to take different modes of transportation that break up the game in interesting ways. Still I think the most fun I had playing Twilight Princess was falling down that river. Maybe I need to get out more.

Beyond that I like the amount of space you get in Twilight Princess. I like that going from one place to another is a significant journey. I'm not sure you need to implement it in quite the way they have. I occasionally felt frustrated when I was sent back and fourth across country and I think a lot of that had to do with the little fights they put in to "keep it interesting". I think you don't need quite as much physical space as they used nor as much "interest", but I do like having significant journeys in a game.

Final Thoughts

Twilight Princess is fun.  I think compared to some of the other Zelda games, it makes you work too hard to get at that fun. I also think it's a game where they tried to make something more mature and ended up splitting the direction of the game. For now, at least, it's the Zelda game I'd least like to go back and replay.

Blog: Thoughts on Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

I recently finished playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. It's a fun game and the HD update really brings it to life (although my nostalgia tells me that this is how good the game has always looked). I did find however that it has some very frustrating game design choices and at the end of the day feels like the first attempt of the developers to keep the franchise from stagnating, without necessarily understanding what parts they're tinkering with.

As a quick note it's worth pointing out that I have played all of the console Zelda games, except for The Adventure of Link and the last half of Majora's Mask (thanks N64 memory expansion and awkward Wii controls). I've missed most of the hand held Zeldas, but have played Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks and A Link Between Worlds. As such some of my feelings on the series may be biased.

Please beware of spoilers for The Wind Waker.

Things I Liked

The Wind Waker does an amazing job of instilling a feeling of the joy of exploration and adventure. Especially when upgraded with the HD graphics, sailing into the world with the music and the waves swelling under you, you feel like you're going on the adventure of a life time. When you spot a tiny island on the horizon and then sail for minutes to get up to it and watch the details resolve into a new adventure is definitely exciting. Even just the act of walking out onto the dock on Windfall or Outset islands provides you with a feeling that great adventure is about to commence.

Watching over home.

The environments of the game are also really good (especially in the HD remake). From the ocean itself and all the different ways it can be in different weather and different times of day to each of the islands which have a wide variety of styles supported by some really great music.

In the HD edition of the game using the game pad to manage the inventory took a little time to get used to, but I came to really like it. Having all of your potential tools laid out in front of you is helpful and having the game pad represent the map was also a plus. I do wish that the game would allow for a little more flexibility on the tools front also possibly some tool tips (I took a break while playing and was apparently in the middle of a delivery quest and never again figure out what the thing in my inventory was nor who wanted it). It would also be nice to annotate the map in the same way that Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks do.

The final thing that I really liked about this game is the end of the final boss fight. Ending the fight by stabbing Ganondorf through the head is an incredible feeling, although not one the game necessarily earns itself. I think that killing Ganondorf is more to do with Ocarina than it is with anything he does in this game Still being able to end the games on a definitive, we have truly defeated evil, note is really cathartic.

The final fight.

Oh an on a side note, the Wii U lets you take screen shots. It's a touch convoluted, but being able to take my own screens has made me very happy.

Things I Didn't Like

The number one thing I didn't like about the game was Z-targeting. In most of the other games in the series I've felt like Z-targeting has largely been intuitive. I'm targeting the things I want to attack and now it's easy to jump to the next thing or to switch out for other attacks. In The Wind Waker (and this may just be in the HD version, I don't remember the original controls that well) I seem to never be targeting the thing I'd like to target. In fact in several boss fights they seem to launch minions at you just to screw up your targeting, which suggests that the developers were aware of this problem as well. It makes the game incredibly frustrating at points and left me not wanting to play more on several occasions.

I also didn't like the dungeon / temple design in Wind Waker. I think the source of this is that the developers wanted to create a grander sense of scale, but this came at the cost of having fewer dungeons and a lot of unnecessary padding in the ones they did create.  They also tried to make the problems in the dungeons more dynamic, requiring you to use several tools together to get past obstacles. While the idea of putting on your iron shoes so you can push down a spring and then spring up to take flight with your leaf is cool, having to get all the items for that out of your inventory every single time you needed to go through a part of the dungeon is frustrating.

I've had it with these boots!

The game also has a weird hand holding pattern. Sometimes it's very aggressive, "hey look at these lights, now read a note about those lights, oh never mind we're just going to point out that you should hit these switches in order." Other times it's so subtle that you're note actually sure it's working. Having to use Phantom Ganondorf's sword as a compass is brilliant, but I didn't get it at all until I looked up a FAQ on the frustrating dungeon right after the lights.

I didn't like how static the world feels. As is usual with  Zelda games the story and world don't advance unless you come along and actually do something, but there seem to be lots of places where nothing ever changes. Maybe I missed it but there's a guy who arrives at Fire Roost Island and then just stands outside baffled by how to get in (despite the path you make). It would have given the game more life and more interest if you'd been able to see him work to become a mailman despite his hinderance of not having wings. Your grandmother changes a bit, but basically sits in her hut doing nothing for the whole game. Again a little bit of character arc for the NPCs would do wonders to make the world feel like you should care about it.

Even the ocean feels somewhat static, there aren't many other ships about on it and those that are tend to stay put attached to which ever island they're a part of the story. The static feeling of the game is also reinforced by the grid system in the map. There is one island in every square, every island has one thing you need to go find on it. It would have been nicer to be able go to some places where there were a lot of island and then others where there are very few. That way you get a little more excitement in exploration, especially if there are places that are dark and dangerous and places that are safer. At the moment "danger" seems to be spread very uniformly across the sea.

I also don't like that the game won't let me challenge Tingle to a duel. Take that your money grubber!

I happened to play some of Sunless Sea around the time I was finishing up The Wind Waker and definitely felt that the way that game handles the risk and reward of sailing is more rewarding than Wind Waker. There are aspects I don't think would fit, such after the islands that move after each rogue-like life, but definitely being able to arrive on "strange shores" would again increase the interest level of Wind Waker.

Things I Noticed

Finding treasure using treasure maps is fun and I like the game of going through the islands and trying to match the different coast lines to the map. It's also nice that you can be more or less challenged by the when you go looking for treasure depending on if you want to see the bright glowing spots or not. However actually picking the treasure up is rather frustrating since you have to get on exactly the right coordinate. Additionally the treasure feels a little lacklustre, other than pieces of heart you only get money and I ended up with thousands of Rupees that I didn't need to spend.

I think the game would have been improved with a fewer treasures to find but with a mini-game to be played when you're looking for them. Ideally this would give you more satisfaction and reward and you could ease the relatively frustrating part of trying to hit exactly the right point on a rolling sea.

Sailing home is always a pretty sight.

Things I'd Include in a Game

The biggest thing Wind Waker makes me want to include in a game is a dynamic world. The NPCs should have arcs and goals and generally be doing something. Everyone in Wind Waker (and honestly in lots of games, but especially Zelda games) is standing around. I'm not even sure they're supposed to want to to save the world even, since I don't know if anyone even knows he exists. Anyone on outset island is just wondering why you haven't rescued your sister yet.

I also want to make sure that  there's a feeling of adventure and exploration. This is a thing that Zelda games are usually very good at invoking, but the grid of islands system somewhat stifles. Being able to set off into the unknown and be rewarded, even if it's just with a view or a secret or a tiny piece of story, gives players a reason to keep playing the game and to keep exploring the world.

Setting out for adventure.

Final Thoughts

The Wind Waker feels like a fractured game. I feel as though they tried to stretch the world of Ocarina of Time into a bigger and more majestic environment, but stymied themselves by imposing rules that overly simplified exploration. I feel like they wanted to get away from the rescue the princess story line, but couldn't figure out how to have an epic quest without that motivator. I feel like the developers wanted to strike out into new story territory, but didn't feel like the could leave all the trappings of Ocarina of time behind them.  I feel like they wanted to introduce more dynamic combat, but didn't have the expertise yet to interactively allow the player to have control and all the cinematic drama at the same time. So while the game has some of the strongest style and some very good game play it never does it self the service of letting these things stand out.

I like The Wind Waker. It's a fun game to play and it has moments of absolute brilliance in game play and story telling. There are frustrating parts and the game is either longer than it should be or is missing a bunch of content, but it's still worth playing for those brilliant moments.

Yeah I always seem to wear ... hey! Wait!

Blog: Thoughts on Breath of Fire

Nostalgia is a funny thing. There are a lot of games I remember a specific fight or a cut scene or a character moment, but Breath of Fire, I remember mostly for a cup of coffee... getting the morning off school in Junior High or High School and getting a fresh cup of coffee and sitting down to play.

Breath of Fire (yes that is a Fish to the left of the hero) - From Hardcore Gaming 101

Lately I've been feeling a pull to play a lot of the old games I keep kicking around and for whatever reason Breath of Fire was at the top of that list. I've play every entry in the series and found them all to be generally likeable if not quite outstanding.

On replay, I thought to myself that while Breath of Fire had some pretty significant limitations but since it must have been such an early SNES RPG that it's easy to forgive. The problem came when I started doing some research:

From the Wikipedia list, Breath of Fire was released in North America on August 10, 1994, just over 2 months before Final Fantasy III/VI was released and years after much stronger RPGS such as Secret of Mana, E.V.O. or Final Fantasy II/IV. It's out of place historically, but given what I've been able to gather from the Internet, it was a project with very limited support within Capcom. This is only in North America as well, I can't imagine how it must have been viewed in Japan compared to some of the RPGs that weren't released internationally.

The other thing to say is that despite the general problems with the first entry in the series, the rest of the games get increasing better (at least up to a point) and the series really manages to differentiate it self.

A dragon told me - From Hardcore Gaming 101

Overall I can't recommend playing Breath of Fire (at least on the SNES, I've never tried the 2001 GBA port), the story is mediocre and much of the game's length is in the form of compound fetch quests (aHaHA, I won't give you the thing until you go get this other thing from the guy who will want you do do something else for HIM! aHaHaHaHa). The combat system drags and when coupled with the very long (though sometimes interesting) dungeons makes for hours of vaguely tortured boredom. At least without a good cup of coffee and a free morning, you should probably give this a miss.

Things I Liked

There were a few things I generally liked about Breath of Fire. First, even though the story is not especially well crafted, I do like globe trotting RPGs and every location in the world is interesting enough that when you first get there you feel like it's worth exploring, even though most of the locals don't have anything useful to say.

Travel the world! Meet these people! They talk by flute. - From GameFaqs - Ofisil

I also liked that each of the characters in your party have a role outside of combat (on of the features they focused on to improve the rest of the series). Going into a dungeon? Better have your thief out so he can defuse the traps. Need to get though that wall? Get out the big guy. Running out of supplies? Bring out your hunter. Running out of money? Put the merchant to work. These all have plusses and minuses, but generally I like the way they add flavour to the game.

Beyond the main party, I also liked the once or twice when guest party members showed up. I like it particularly as an aspect of the story, having some extra people around who are not actually passive and incompetent around you and allowing you to do things with part of the party without having to change the difficulty. Mechanically (although less so in this game) it's also a nice chance to see more and different powers than your low level party might have.

The game also has an interesting tactic for dealing with your extra party members. One of your party can fuse several members together creating a character who is stronger than any of the separate members and has most of their abilities. In the late game this means that you can have seven of the eight characters in your party participating in big combat. The fusion system does produce one major question however: why do a monkey, a fox, an ox and a gold fish fused together form a floating green duck?

The dungeon design is also an interesting point for the game. When playing, it's awful, because the dungeons are long and the random encounter combat takes over every 4 steps on average. However, I do like that most of the dungeons make sense. When they're a ruined castle, they have rooms a castle might. When you're in a temple you have rooms a temple might. When you're in the great treasure store of the ancients there are traps and secrets hidden everywhere. I like this and I think that if the combat didn't drag the game down so far it would actually be a general boon to the game.

Another  thing I liked about Breath of Fire was the "surprise" extra HP on the bosses. Especially early in the game fighting down the super powerful boss, getting their HP bar to drop to zero and then having them stand up and laugh at you is pretty cool. That it happens on every boss throughout the game is a little silly and loses the effect, but for a one-off it's not a bad idea.

Finally I have to say that while it's frustrating that the game had to rely so heavily on them, I love all the extra maps and charts that Breath of Fire came with. I like that kind of stuff and actually needing to refer to the map or look up what an item will do. As I said the fact that you needed to within game was a bit of a draw back, but doing it was cool.

Things I Didn't Like

As I've mentioned by far and away the worst part of Breath of Fire is the combat. It's the worst of the old-style turn based combat. Swinging your sword causes a random amount of damage to the enemy, casting a spell causes a set of damage to the enemy. That's it.

For the whole game.

There is too much of this. Also she's not supposed to be blue ... I think. - From GameFaqs - Ofisil

There's a hint of a damage type system, but it's either glitched or not properly implemented because nothing ever changes. The hero can turn into several types of dragons, but the only thing to turn into is the one that will deal the most damage. To everything.

On top of that healing spells are cheap and your healer deals awful damage so even there the only question is how much damage to heal from the rest of the party.

The random encounters have another problem, they don't scale. The random encounter rate is set and you fight whatever is in the area. So if you're in an area with easy enemies, you fight them. Over and over again. And if there are enough of them then you can spend turn after turn dealing hundreds of times the health of the enemy but you can only hit them one at a time. Any kind of system to recognize that you're about to curb stomp the bad guys would have been great relief, especially given how much back tracking the game expects of you.

Another problem with Breath of Fire, but also one many RPGs of the age, is that clues about what's going on with the story are few and far between. If you weren't paying attention while plot was happening, or didn't understand, or heaven help you, you haven't played for a week, you're often left with no idea as to where to go next and there's no way within the game to get anyone to tell you anything. While I don't love some of the hand holding that modern games provide, Ni No Kuni's ever present plot instruction comes to mind, I think it's important to have something to give the player a direction to go if they're not finding it on their own.

Finally, as I already mentioned, for a game released this far into the SNES life, it doesn't look very good. The overworld sprites are not very detailed an animation though out the game is very limited. The combat sprites are nice and big, but are also oddly coloured compared to their overworld versions.

Generally I think a lot of the problems with this game come down to the size of the cartridge.  Breath of Fire was released on a 12Mbit cartridge which was significantly smaller than just about any other RPG released on the SNES before or after. I think generally this shows that Capcom was not willing to put much money into development or production.

Things I Noticed

One thing I thought was funny as I played Breath of Fire was how much I did and didn't remember about the game. There were a few dungeons that I remember the layout of perfectly having not played the game in at least a decade. Some of those were early but interestingly some were quite late in the game. At the same time there were parts of the game I had no recollection of at all (such as the fusion system) despite having used them before.

He's the first. Others will follow. Ryu - From Hardcore Gaming 101

Things I'd Include in a Game

I think the big thing to take away from Breath of fire is that if you're going to have a large group in an RPG make sure that they all have things to do. There are some games where you have a bunch of people sitting around because they're not as good as others and you don't have a reason to use them. While I might not always implement it the way Breath of Fire has, making sure that every playable character has a unique and required characteristic in gameplay is important.

I also always like to make sure that dungeons are reasonable, if a place was a place make it look like that place rather than just like a random assortment of rooms. I think this probably untenable in some situations but it's still an ideal I find important.

Finally I do like the bosses not getting knocked down when the "run out" of HP. If used sparingly I think that can give a game a little memorable spark. If overused, like in Breath of Fire, it gets uninteresting really quickly.

Final Thoughts

As I said in my introduction, there's not a lot of inherent reason to play Breath of Fire. Other games in the series are better and other games of the era are also better. I enjoyed it for the nostalgia and for some of the touches of the world, but that's about it. I'm glad it exists and I'll leave it there.

The End. Also that's a hell of a font.

Blog: Thoughts on Ni No Kuni

This is a post I've been sitting on for a very long time. It's been most of a year since I finished playing Ni No Kuni, but I haven't felt like finishing and getting this out the door. Aside from normal procrastination, I think the problem is that, while Ni No Kuni is a great game, I had far too many hopes for the future of good JRPGs riding on it. I loved it and enjoyed pretty much every minute I spent playing it, but I always wanted it to be a little more than it was. It's a game that's easy to recommend to anyone willing to put a little time into a game, but it's also an illustration that it's the little things that separate very good games from the very best games.

As always with my Thoughts on posts, there will be spoilers for the whole of Ni No Kuni.

Things I Liked

I loved the visual style of Ni No Kuni. Animated by Studio Ghibli, everything is beautiful, charming, exotic and fun. Characters are easy to identify. Environments are beautifully rendered. Places are easy to see and navigate and remember. Animations are complex and realistic.

Running through the forrest.

One of the small things, that speaks to the attention to detail the developers put into the game, is how well the main character Oliver transitions between different animations. You see him hop as he crosses a stream or jump from one mushroom to the next in the forrest and it's all simple and fluid with no weird grabbing of the character or stopping to load the animation (I'm looking at you Tales of Graces). When Oliver goes up stairs he steps on each step.

You can also see this in Oliver's main companion in the story, Mr. Drippy Lord High Lord of the Fairies. He's very animated as he follows Oliver wherever he goes. At first I thought the he was just doing idle animations, but eventually I realized that he was subtly reacting to many of the actions I was taking in the game. In particular you can see him react when you cast magic, which given the story of the game makes sense.

The story is also very strong. Ni No Kuni might be dismissed as "kiddy," but there is a lot of depth and complexity to the story. In the early game Oliver's mother dies after rescuing him from the river, which he fell in due to a certain amount of irresponsibility. For a significant part of the game Oliver is trying to either resurrect his mother or find the instance of his mother in the other world. However, when it eventually becomes apparent that this isn't possible, he accepts it and stays strong under the other responsibilities he's been given. There's none of the general weak wishy-washyness that tends to accompany RPG (and particularly JRPG) protagonists and that makes the game much more enjoyable.

Walking to town is a little like walking into a Ghibli film.

The end of the game caries through on this as well. There are no punches pulled at the end, no deus ex and no sudden then they all lived happily ever after. It's also heart-wrenching when Oliver dies in game and says "I'm sorry Mom".

Another thing I liked about the game was the Wizard's Companion. As a student wizard it makes sense that Oliver would need a text book and this makes having a manual for the game seamless. I regret not preordering the Wizard's edition of the game which came with a printed version, but having access to the manual as part of the game was very useful, although it would have been nice if the book reader was a little more usable. As a book lover having a book as a central pillar of the game both in universe and out was very enjoyable.

Things I Didn't Like

The biggest problem I had with with Ni No Kuni is the combat system. They've opted for a real-time, Pokemon-style approach, where in you switch out a series of monsters to fight along side your heroes. They've included a lot of factors in the combat system including the monster's affinity for different aspects of the heroes' personalities, different elemental rock-paper-scissors dynamics and different types of moves.

There are three big problems with the combat. The first is that during combat everything is extremely hectic and complicated. You and each of your two active allies (and you can eventually switch to a 3rd ally as well) can either fight yourselves or switch out with any of your three monsters. Everyone on your side has a large number of different powers they can use, all of which are very flashy. Meanwhile you are fighting several enemies all of whom have their own set of powers all of which also create a lot of visual noise. When viewed all at once can make it very complicated to see what's actually going on, beyond the complication of figuring out which tactics you should be using at any point in time.

It's easy to see what's going on here ... right?

This leads to another problem with the combat system, which is that the AI is not very helpful. You're unable to directly control all three heroes at once, so you are required to rely on the AI for two-thirds of the actions your group is performing at any point in time. In some games with this real time system, it's possible at least to define some rules that the AIs can follow to be more useful, but in Ni No Kuni you only have a few options available. You can attack using all your magic powers (which means you never have magic points when you need them), you can attack using none of your magic powers, or you can heal (which means that they heal you all the time, again running out of magic points, but then also never attacking).

Beyond having poor control at the macro-level they also make poor choices at the micro level. Your partners will cast fire spells on fire monsters for no damage, heal you for conditions you don't have or put out the monster that is most vulnerable to the attack that's coming next. They tend to have very little beneficial impact on the game play. I can understand not wanting to have a game that wins itself without the player, but having useless partners is not a good either.

The third combat system problem is much larger overall. There is a huge range of choice available in monsters, monster training and equipment, however there's no real reason to make any of these choices. Now, I freely admit to having not wanted to invest too much time into the combat system, so I was happy to have a team that was "good enough" most of the time. That being said, switching between different monsters was mostly an aesthetic decision (aside from ensuring that I had coverage of the three elements), and powering up the different stats of the monsters was something that I did when I had too much stuff in my inventory (as determined when I was going through too many things, not a hard limit). Even managing weapons and armour was largely useless. With sixteen heroes and monsters, I really have no idea what anyone was equipped with at any point in time. Money was tight enough in the game that you had to limit what you bought, which tended to mean that I'd buy a couple of things for the most "interesting" team members and then let everyone else use hand-me-downs.

I'm sure that, for the interested, there's enough meat there for anyone to spend a significant amount of time maximizing their party's effectiveness, but I never had trouble that simply grinding for a half an hour (perhaps another issue with the game, but an aspect of the genre I'm willing to overlook) didn't solve.

Aside from the combat, another problem that the game really suffered from is an excess of potential solutions for problem solving. You spend a lot of time building or rebuilding bridges in Ni No Kuni, but there are at least 4 different spells that you can use to build or rebuild a bridge and the game not clear on why one would work while another wouldn't in a given situation. This results in your arbitrarily standing in the marked "use magic here" spot and casting every spell you know until you find the one that works.

This tends to be true every time magic is the solution to a situation, and considering the excessive hand holding that the game tends towards, it's very frustrating when the game suddenly abandons you to your magic list with no guide and no clue.

Better still would be to let all those different possibilities work. Oh, you figure out to rewind time until the bridge was there again, cool. Oh, you made a new bridge out of ice, cool. There's no reason in this game to not give the player points for trying something. It would also let the game be more interactive and immersive with it's help, "oh hey, I can see you're trying to freeze the lava with the ice spell and that's not working, but did you know that there used to be a stone bridge here? Maybe that would be helpful".

The over abundance of solutions caries over to the alchemy system as well. In Dragon Quest VIII (also made by Level-5), the alchemy system was frustrating because of the long delays in creating items, but you had a fairly clear idea what you were trying to do. In Ni No Kuni creating new items doesn't have long delays but it's often not easy to determine what you needed. Additionally, finding ingredients was frustrating (they're mostly released at certain points on the map at random moments). The items you end with can be useful and powerful, but for me at least it was almost never worth the time to make them and faster to go with the buyable alternatives.

Considering that I've already praised the game for the attention to detail put into it, there are some points where very simple details are missed out on. For example, you spend the whole of the game helping an NPC couple travel the world, learning all the things they need to know and getting all the supplies they need to start the worlds best store. In the very last stage of the game you're given access to a kick ass store with all the greatest items and weapons ... who runs this store? Totally different characters.

If I had to sum up the things I didn't like about the game it would be that the game is over built. It has more in party NPCs than it needs, it has more fighters than it needs, it has more mechanics than it needs and it has more solutions than it needs. I think the thing that would have taken Ni No Kuni from a very good game to an ageless great game is a serious round of editing.

Things I Noticed

I found the companions in this game a strange addition. On the one hand I think they helped form a lot of the story, but on the other hand I think the story of a lonely boy with his only friend the lamp-nosed fairy dude might also have been very compelling. As I already mentioned the AI in combat was at best unhelpful, so mechanically I don't think they were necessary. I also know that the story in Ni No Kuni is dark enough as it stands and having Oliver's friends travel with him gives the game and the story some brighter points to hold on to.

Another thing that would have been nice to see would to have seen how the concept of one of the greatest wizards / sages in a very long time effected the game world. I think this would have been interesting in two ways.

Firstly it would have been nice to see Oliver's magic getting stronger over time. For example, in the beginning your fast travel spell might just be able to pop you out in a few locations, but as you get stronger you can jump to each city and then eventually to anywhere you want in the world. This does a few things, first it cuts down a lot on the late game running back and forth where you need to meet someone who's a very long way away from a touch down point.

Secondly it allows the game to show you as becoming increasingly powerful outside of the combat system and outside of being told what a strong wizard you're becoming. It gives you the chance for a more subtle interaction with the people in the world, if you use your strong magic around them all the time it stands to unnerve them, so it becomes a choice on your part as to whether you frighten people both in Motorville and the other world or whether you avoid them.

You'd better be afraid of me!

Things I'd Include in a Game

There are four things I would take, directly or indirectly, from Ni No Kuni to include in a game of my own. The first is that your power as it is represented and needed for the plot should both be effected by the game play and effect the game play. This could be implemented simply in better stats when you fight something, but it would be much better to feel the game mechanics change through the application for your power. A strong wizard should be able to do more with a spell, a diplomat should be able to suggest more radical solutions or a general should be able to implement more dynamic actions. The scale varies with the game, but allowing the mechanics to grow with the players power allows the player to feel more invested.

The second thing I would take is that there need to be several solutions to a given problem. Especially in an RPG where the player is investing their time and personality into the player it does nothing to punish them for not guessing the right answer from a list. Letting different possibilities exist can be difficult, since you either need to predict them ahead of time or develop dynamic systems to manage them at the time they happen. However it gives the player more feeling of power (and cleverness) if they're able to proceed without being hindered by the "game" mechanic of the game. At a minimum the lesson to take from Ni No Kuni is that it's necessary to give clear hints when a particular mechanic should be applied.

The third thing is perhaps a given, but all of the elements of the game should build together in the same direction. In Ni No Kuni the story is supported by the style and the theme. These are supported by the game play (which is maybe not as thorough as it could be but still leads in the same directions). It makes the storytelling much more coherent than many games. Could Ni No Kuni have handled this better? Yes, there are times where they break the other elements for a game mechanic and there are times where a few extra mechanics would have made it easier to believe in the game. Overall however the polish they put on the game in this way is important and should be emulated.

Finally, I think including an in/out universe manual like the Wizard's companion is a must, at least for my own edification. Old books are cool and having a great thing to read about the video game I just got was one of the highlights of my childhood. I'd like to pass that feeling on.

Final Thoughts

Ni No Kuni is a great game. It doesn't, as I'd hoped, have quite enough strength to be one of the greatest games. Perhaps for me it's simply an aspect that nostalgia makes some of those greatest games (such as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy VI) seem better than they were at the time. Perhaps some of Ni No Kuni's rough edges will wear off over time and I'll feel more strongly for it. Even if it never does, it's a highly polished quality game that everyone should play.

Ni No Kuni is a magical journey?

If you like JRPGs or you like Studio Ghibli films and you haven't played Ni No Kuni then there's no question that you should. It's worth the time investment, for the story as much as for the game play experience. It is linear so if you only somewhat interested I'm sure a good Let's play would give you nearly as good a feeling of the game. If you have the time to commit though I fully recommend playing it.